Wednesday, May 27, 2015

I'm a bit of a football fan and I'm not ashamed to say it. One of the more interesting elements of being a football fan is the NFL Draft. Each year leading up to the draft the top college players hit the NFL combine and run through a battery of tests where they are poked, prodded and measured in every way that NFL scouts find worthwhile. This includes everything from measuring hand size, to vertical jump, to shuttle runs and even to a variety of tests including the Wonderlic Test.

The Wonderlic is one of the better known intelligence tests, but unlike some of its older contemporaries like the IQ test, the Wonderlic can be administered quickly and is thought to be more of a measure of someone's ability to "think on their feet". 50 questions in 12 minutes. For those who score well it's a pat on the back, for those who score poorly, expect a media shaming.

As a college educated person, I wanted to see how I'd do compared to the jocks so I could feel superior or great shame. I signed up at a local administrator and gave it a go. Here was my experience.

Nerves. It's been a long time since I took a test of any kind. Though I had nothing to gain in this experience, it did cost me money and I didn't want to explain to my wife if I was found to be stupid.

The test goes FAST. I mean, unbelievably fast. I was cognizant of the time for the most part, but I still wasn't able to finish the questions in time. I was on question 46, and though there was no warning I knew I was about out of time so I started randomly filling in answers but left the final two blank.

It's very easy to get caught up on a single question, which is what happened to me. I should have skipped it - it was a math question that I kept second guessing myself on and it ate up 30-45 seconds, and that's a big no-no.

So how'd I do? I ended up with a 41. So, by NFL standards, I'm pretty smart. Though, I guess that's a good score by most any standard. That said, this isn't reason to get big headed, it's a test. I'm good at taking tests and always have been. I imagine there are plenty of people good at processing information and even highly book smart who just wouldn't do well based on the logistics of the Wonderlic.

That said, I've looked around on the web and taken a few of the free online versions, and the only one which I found to be a fairly close approximation was wonderlictestsample.com, so give it a try if you're interested in seeing how you'd do with Wonderlic questions.